Content Marketing Strategy

6 content marketing takeaways from the French Resistance

By Bhaskar Sarma 3 Comments

Around this time back in 1944, the events depicted in Saving Private Ryan played themselves out in the cities and the countryside of France.

The Allies and the Nazis were locked in vicious battles, and the good guys were winning.

But if you think about it, the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944 should have been a major disaster for the Allies.

This was no lopsided US v. Taliban situation and the Germans were sitting behind the Atlantic Wall– coastal fortifications made up of concrete and guns and radar and designed to make Hitler’s Europe impregnable to a seaborne invasion.

The Nazi supply lines were also less prone to stretching and disruption.

But all that counted for nothing. When the rubber hit the road, the Germans were rapidly pushed back and Paris was liberated in August 1944, effectively ending Hitler’s 4 year old reign over France.

How did that happen?

The Zen of gating B2B content: How, What and When

By Bhaskar Sarma 7 Comments

How many times have you given up on downloading a piece of useful looking content only because it was locked behind a registration form?

I had the same feeling today but figured investigating this topic should be fun, considering everyone had an opinion on it.

This particular form had everything, from reasonable and essential stuff like name and email address to more intimate info like home address and phone number.

As I stared at that form with several required fields the only thing going through my head was this:

“Dude, you will make for a very crappy first date when you ask all these things right after introductions.”

So I did what I usually do when I see content ( say, the schematics of the Death Star) that will help me with my job (Rebel Alliance pilot)…

…but gated behind a form

The Sherlock Holmes guide to creating buyer personas

By Bhaskar Sarma 11 Comments

If you want to get good at content marketing, you will have to understand who you are creating content for, and what’s in it for them.

It’s elementary, dear marketer.

But it’s also stunning how many companies jump into creating content without doing that basic legwork

That’s like Inspector Lestrade and his men trampling over the evidence on a crime scene and then expecting Holmes to catch the perp.

Ain’t gonna happen, folks.

If you want to get the kind of results out of your content marketing that the C-suite wants, and if you hate wasting money and time as much as I do, you will first sit down and create buyer personas.

And you are welcome to steal the operating principles of the consulting detective living in the flat at 221B Baker Street, London.

The game’s afoot, people.

B2B prospects turning back because they can’t afford you? Do these 7 things

By Bhaskar Sarma 4 Comments

Let me paint you a picture.

Your prospects need you. They know what you are offering is going to rock their world and solve their problem.

You have even helped them sell their wives, their bosses and their bosses’ wives on the usefulness of your offer.

But then you hear these dreaded words…

“We wish we could have signed the contract, but we just don’t have the budget now. But next quarter/year, definitely. ”

As a B2B marketer selling products and services worth thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars in a slow economy, you will come up against this grim scenario.

Prospects who are as psyched about your solution as an Apple fanatic is over a new iDevice might not even pick your follow up calls 8 months down the line

The content marketing lie B2B marketers in “boring” niches keep falling for

By Bhaskar Sarma 5 Comments

No, it’s not the “there is no ROI from content marketing” myth.

I am going to debunk that in the first sub-heading.

I am talking about the “we don’t need to do content marketing because our customers don’t read blogs/research online” myth.

It’s 2012. Are you really going with that excuse in B2B marketing and expect to survive?

To be clear, I am not arguing for or against specific types of content. I am no blogging wingnut and if your market is more responsive to video I will be the first person to urge you to get on that bus.

In fact, I will send you off with a list of best practices and examples so that you can race to the front of the pack.

But you have to realize that you are bringing a knife to a gun fight if your competition is killing it with their blog…

Will content marketing make B2B companies money? Yup, says these 3 infographics

By Bhaskar Sarma Leave a Comment

Around these parts, I keep talking about how important content marketing is for business and sales.

And since this is not celeb gossip, I try to spice it up through crazy stories like content marketing and wars in the ME

But after a while, it kinda gets boring.

After all, how many times will you read the same words?

We all want us some eye candy, baby. Pictures tell more than a thousand words, and if the picture has words in it the level of awesomeness just increases.

In other words, hello infographics.

You might have seen a few of them before but hey, do you listen to the Beatles only once?

Cavemen, storytelling and stock options

By Bhaskar Sarma 2 Comments

9 foot tall demons, a girl tortured by her stepmother, a country bumpkin who becomes the court astrologer because of saying the right word at the right time in front of the right person- Burhi Aair Xadhu (Assamese for Gandma’s Tales) was full of such stories.

And as a kid, I devoured these folktales. Once I was shut up in a room reading for so long that my family was just this close to calling the police. True story.

Like me, most of the members of the human race loves stories.It probably goes back to Hor the caveman who gathered the members of his tribe around a campfire to tell them how he saw spirits setting fire to a tree while beating a very loud drum. [Read more…] about Cavemen, storytelling and stock options